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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Mar 20, 2022 2:30:17 GMT -5
We closed the Free Agency thread because too many of the same posters were posting too many of the same posts, pages and pages of complaining without adding any insight or humor. We allowed it to go on for much of the winter because there was little baseball news and therefore wasn't much to talk about. That is not the case now. This repetitive and poor-quality posting will not spread into this and other threads. Consider this a formal warning to all. (Sorry your post got deleted, Eric. I've had a few times where I'd written out lengthy, thoughtful things and then gotten logged out. It is very frustrating!) Pro tip: If you find a post stretching into a third or fourth paragraph, cut and paste it into a text file and then take your time without worrying something funky is going to happen to your connection. I do that at literally every other site I post to. But this board has a great built in recovery system. The only way to lose a post you're writing is the one we just invented.
Anyway, the main reason I came back to this thread was to note that I discovered that I can't bring myself to post off-topic anywhere, so I'm posting my thoughts in the new "Do You Want Story?" thread, which at least has an overlap.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Mar 19, 2022 13:02:05 GMT -5
(Sorry your post got deleted, Eric. I've had a few times where I'd written out lengthy, thoughtful things and then gotten logged out. It is very frustrating!) Yeah, I know folks can empathize in general ... but I'm guessing that never happened to your first post in 3 1/2 months! Enough meta discussion about moderating. If you don't like how we moderate this forum, please feel free peruse the other options out there, and we'll happily welcome you back when you see the other cesspools options. I understand the frustration over a garbage thread, but the way to deal with that in moderation is to threaten folks with post deletion, and then follow through, correct? Not to close a live thread purely over quality issues.
Folks may have noticed that I sometimes bother to cut and paste an answer from one thread to another, to get it back where it belongs after topic drift. I'm not sure anyone else does that! I gave some thought to where to post this time, as I always do. There were two position left on the MLB bench to be filled, likely via free agency. (There still are.) Closing the thread was objectively a mistake.
But yeah, one mistake does not sully what remains as the most awesome place for Red Sox discussion. Nobody's perfect, nor even Alex Cora.
Anyway, the main reason for this post is to let folks know that I'm going to post my conclusions, but not the extensive rationales behind them, in the spring training thread, where they will of course be completely off topic. That's something I have time for!
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Mar 19, 2022 1:00:33 GMT -5
I just spent 90 minutes typing up all my thoughts about the season and off-season, and then got a message saying oops, an error, you can't post in this thread. So I tried a different one.
All that text is gone, and the "we found a post you were working on" had nothing.
How badly does this suck? WTF?
And, oh, this is the second time I wrote this up.
Thread got locked because well usual Sox prospects drama I would love to hear ur thoughts. They are usually pretty insightful Yeah, I realized that when the "this thread is locked" notice appeared. That was after my second attempt to post in the thread, so it does not appear immediately. And apparently there's no way to check to see if someone is in the process of writing a post when the thread is locked. The board software should notify the moderator about that.
What are the odds that when I return to the board after being absent the entire post-season (per my slogan) that my post about everything disappears this way?
I am overwhelmed with stuff to do in IRL. This was intended to be a pleasant break from all of that ... such is life. Right now I'm not up to doing it again, even if I had the time, which I don't.
I will quote the first line of the post ... "This appears to be the best thread to post this in." Seriously!
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Mar 19, 2022 0:24:20 GMT -5
Note to moderators: before locking a thread because it seem to be useless, is there a way to check to see if someone has a long, thoughtful post that they're about to hit "post" on?
I'll never get those 90 minutes back and I suspect no one will ever see what I had to say. I'm just not up to saying it again.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Mar 19, 2022 0:15:29 GMT -5
I just spent 90 minutes typing up all my thoughts about the season and off-season, and then got a message saying oops, an error, you can't post in this thread. So I tried a different one.
All that text is gone, and the "we found a post you were working on" had nothing.
How badly does this suck? WTF?
And, oh, this is the second time I wrote this up.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 1, 2021 13:48:23 GMT -5
Count me as one more who saw this and said, aha, Hill next.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 28, 2021 3:05:03 GMT -5
I thought they'd be signing an established guy to fit into the middle of the rotation, quite possibly a LHP (Rodon? Hill?), plus an upside guy who can pitch out of the pen and add depth. Perfectly happy with Wacha as the latter.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 19, 2021 17:45:10 GMT -5
Cotillo tweeting that they're "adding four prospects to the 40-man roster", and Speier following suit ... but I find it hard to imagine that they think it's likelier that they lose Potts and Rosario to a waiver claim than Ward and Feltman in the Rule 5, and impossible that they value Potts and Rosario above Ward and Feltman (or Santos or whomever).
More often than not teams DFA failed prospects at the same time they add the new additions. I'll be shocked if the "4 added guys" isn't the net addition and it's add 6, subtract 2.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 19, 2021 17:22:16 GMT -5
Note that I included Feltman but not Santos ...
Feltman because of his past and reliever volatility and because he's already had AAA success.
Not Santos because I don't see him as effective in MLB jumping from AA, and because of his limited upside.
Obviously they know more than any of us ... any one of the fringe guys Ian listed could be added as a surprise because they (and potential drafting teams) see upside in analytic data we have no awareness of, let alone access to. German in particular could fit that description.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 19, 2021 17:00:28 GMT -5
Here's a comment I made at the Athletic, edited to remove stuff previously stated ...
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After the draft the Sox will be looking to add six players, but it might be just five towards the 40-man. They may be able to sign Iglesias to a minor-league deal with an MLB promise.
Anyone who is likely to be taken gets protected, because the worst case is that you have to trade him. So Downs, Bello, Winckowski, Ward, Crawford, and Feltman seem like certain adds. OTOH, Potts and Rosario seem likely to be DFA'd and clear waivers. So that's a net plus 4.
So you're at 37. Adding 5 more guys before ST starts means that you're trading two over the winter (not necessarily from those named already), which isn't bad.
So the tough calls are Rafaela and Jimenez. If you leave them unprotected, there's a small chance of losing them -- do you take that gamble? If you protect them, it means you have to shed someone else via trade to make room for winter pickups. And each player you trade away reduces you near-MLB depth. So how much they value Crawford and Feltman as potential contributors, and (to a lesser extent) Hernandez as an extra catcher, factors in here: the more they like them, the harder it is to protect Rafela and Jimenez.
[Also: if by some chance they can find in the draft a reliever with upside that can stick as an adequate last man in the pen, that's a wash in terms of org depth. Basically, it would be someone they like better than Feltman.]
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 17, 2021 22:39:47 GMT -5
I was of course forgetting how soon the deadline was ... I should have made it clear that the three guys I said need to be (ultimately) traded for pre-eligible guys (Ward, Crawford, and Feltman) need to be protected now and traded later when we need to open up space for acquisitions. And it's always better to fill roster needs via trades than by FA signings. In fact, I could see them filling a rotation spot, both bullpen spots, and the Casas-placeholder LHB 1B via trade rather than free agency. You could see them trading Ward for a guy they think is the next Pivetta, e.g.
Protecting 4 keepers + 3 to trade would put us at 40. The open questions are 1) how many of the trio of likely trims do you trim now, and 2) is there anyone else you add, e.g., Fitzgerald? Rafaela would't surprise me. You want to end up at 39 in case there's another Whitlock out there.
There are of course scenarios where Jimenez or even Downs are one of the traded-away players. The math here is, the top-secret internal evaluation versus what other teams think.
My guess is that they protect the 7 obvious guys and Rafaela and DFA or trade Potts and Rosario while keeping Hernandez for the time being.
Good stuff, but if there's another Whitlock out there, he's going to be picked by a team picking in the top 5 the way we were last year, right? I was just being lazy there ... I almost typed "Arauz" but thought that would be less interesting! Yeah, a Whitlock relative to draft position ... and I believe we had the 18 or 19 pick for Arauz vs. 23 this year. But if a lot of teams fill their roster, it might be effectively a good deal higher, so that's probably a solid comp. I don't see a 40th guy you'd be concerned about losing.
OTOH, I think the only workable roster spot for a guy you keep all year would be, again, a reliever. But that's exactly the position where you're most likely to find someone underrated.
Trivia note: Ryan Pressly also was taken with the 4th spot in the draft. He and Whitlock both pitched in game 4 and that nicely symmetric relationship of course went unmentioned on TV.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 16, 2021 13:35:08 GMT -5
If I remember correctly they can trade certain players before the deadline. What I'm saying is simply instead of burning a spot on Crawford just deal him for someone who wouldn't be eligible for the rule 5 this year. Or deal him in a package with a couple of other players for someone who would be a fit for the 26 man roster before the deadline this week. If he has enough value to get something in a trade, then he has value. If he has value, it's worth considering protecting him instead of losing him for nothing in Rule 5. The threshold isn't "will become a major league regular" for protection. It's some combination of likelihood of being selected and likelihood of sticking versus chances of later having to DFA or otherwise make room. If you're saying they should trade him... then they should protect him until they trade him, rather than just lose him. If they're making the sort of deal you're talking about, then the receiving team is going to add him to the 40-man most likely, so I don't see the rush. The 40-man is currently at 33. They have tons of room, in the short term at least. I think there's a very high likelihood that if Crawford is left unprotected, he would be picked and he would probably stick. That's why I have him in at least the highly likely to be protected category. I was of course forgetting how soon the deadline was ... I should have made it clear that the three guys I said need to be (ultimately) traded for pre-eligible guys (Ward, Crawford, and Feltman) need to be protected now and traded later when we need to open up space for acquisitions. And it's always better to fill roster needs via trades than by FA signings. In fact, I could see them filling a rotation spot, both bullpen spots, and the Casas-placeholder LHB 1B via trade rather than free agency. You could see them trading Ward for a guy they think is the next Pivetta, e.g.
Protecting 4 keepers + 3 to trade would put us at 40. The open questions are 1) how many of the trio of likely trims do you trim now, and 2) is there anyone else you add, e.g., Fitzgerald? Rafaela would't surprise me. You want to end up at 39 in case there's another Whitlock out there.
There are of course scenarios where Jimenez or even Downs are one of the traded-away players. The math here is, the top-secret internal evaluation versus what other teams think.
My guess is that they protect the 7 obvious guys and Rafaela and DFA or trade Potts and Rosario while keeping Hernandez for the time being.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Nov 16, 2021 4:28:43 GMT -5
Doing the math: 33 guys at present, minus Reissario, Potts, and Hernandez (Valdez, with his remaining option, is too useful to dump), plus 6 acquisitions as the projected roster has it (which I think is right), leaves room for 4 additions: Downs, Bello, Jimenez and Winckowski.
They may be able to get creative and create a 5th opening, but I think a chief strategy will be to trade guys that seem likely to be drafted (e.g., Crawford, Feltman, and Ward) for interesting non-eligible guys of comparable apparent value, with the hopes of stealing a better prospect or two.
We now return you to the regularly scheduled doing more important things. (I do have some thoughts on the post-season that I'll get to eventually.)
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 21, 2021 5:51:39 GMT -5
Renfroeâs defense is definitely inconsistent (particularly his range/routes). He looked like a Gold Glover in parts of the first half but tailed off considerably in the second half. Heâs a good player but not a no-doubt starter, both for this series, where I would consider sitting him for Dalbec, and for next year, where I might consider adding an outfielder (that could be Schwarber or someone else). Kiké's not moving off of CF, right? And there's no reason not to sign him to an extension.
I see Duran as a LF / CF 4th outfielder next year. As a LF, he's often in for Renfroe with Verdugo in RF, and as a CF, he's sometimes in for Arroyo with Kiké at 2B. It's a way of getting an extra LHB in the lineup, and it might end up as a full platoon with Renfroe.
They have an opportunity to find a LHH 1B who's a Kiké / Renfoe-type upside project to be the final guy on the bench, subbing for Dalbec versus tough righties. I think Iglesias returns as the backup MI.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 19, 2021 14:31:08 GMT -5
Why the f*** is the Braves / Dodgers game starting at 2 PM local time instead of 1 PM, resulting in an almost certain conflict between the end of their game and the start of ours? Is that to punish Dodgers fans by putting the end of the game more squarely in rush hour?
I'm guessing that the network picked the time to maximize eyeballs on ads.
I don't know when the TV deals are up, but if MLb retained power over picking announcers and game times, it would help baseball, and in the long run might even be better for the networks.,
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 19, 2021 11:20:51 GMT -5
Going into the CS, ESPN's number-cruncher Bradford Doolittle had the Astros as 27.9% to win the WS, with the Sox at 13.6% and the Braves at 14.2%. Dodgers were 44.3%. I don't believe he's very good at his job.
Overlooked in all the prognostication ... we're the only team left with a trusted fourth starter.
Dodgers lost Kershaw which bumped Gonsolin up to 4, and they chose to use an opener for him and only had him get 5 outs as the less-than-bulk guy. They're faced with trying that again in game 5 versus Fried.
Braves had already demoted 5 starter Smyly to a bulk guy following Jesse Chavez. He's on the roster but hasn't pitched. 4 starter was Huascar Ynoa who had a 6.52 ERA in April, and he's pitched once in relief this post-season. They got through the DS by starting Morton on 3 days rest. They're going to have to cobble up a bullpen game tomorrow in game 4 against Urias.
And of course the Astros now have their 5 and 6 in their rotation (perhaps withe openers) after losing 1 and 3.
And double of course, we're the one team with a 5 starter, in Houck, who would be trusted if we did have an injury.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 19, 2021 0:33:22 GMT -5
The most ironic part about this blowout - Houston had a higher xBA than we did. Hopefully that xBA trend doesn't persist through the week. They had a bunch of loud outs, in the 6th and 9th innings especially. Alvarez had an 89% xBA on his 9th inning lineout. This is shouting back to our conversation about E-Eod and the reasons karma might be skill.
The Astros had 5 hard-hit batted balls with xBA > .500. One was Tucker's homer, and they went 1/4 on the others.
Siri's lineout to center in the 3rd was 98.6, .600. But when you hit that that ball to straightaway CF occupied by a GG-caliber fielder, it's an out. The pitcher has influence on batted ball direction, so there's a decent amount of skill involved here.
Alvarez's single off the wall in the 4th was legit, if you ignore the crazy outlier inning E-Rod had after waiting 36 minutes.
In the 6th Correa smoked a 107.3, .540 grounder ... directly at Arroyo, who, like Kiké on Siri, made a nice play.
And the Alvarez shot was directly at a fielder in a shift.
Sure, there's some luck when all three of the guys who stroke a playable expected hard hit do so directly at one of the spots where you placed a fielder after extensive, optimizing analysis. But that's in the dictionary under "luck"" as defined by Branch Rickey: "the residue of design."
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 18, 2021 22:29:49 GMT -5
Unmentioned on air: four Sox pitchers (including the last two guys in the pen) held the Astros hitless over the last 5 innings.
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 18, 2021 16:24:43 GMT -5
Has anyone pointed this out? Since the start of expanded playoffs, the Sox has never lost a series where the lost game 1 and won game 2. They're 4-0. Three of them ended in 3- or 4-game sweeps.
1986, Angels CS. Won 5 through 7. 2013 Tigers CS. Won 3, 5, and 6. 2018 Astros CS. Won 3 through 5. 2021 Rays DS. Won 3 and 4.
First three were home losses.
In fact, the Sox are 9-0 in the JWH era when they win game 2. Last time they won game 2 but lost a series, they had a manager who was as bad as Cora is good.
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 18, 2021 14:44:58 GMT -5
Here's my less scientific three chunks of the season (ERA/FIP/xFIP):
4/8-5/7: 3.82/3.68/3.37 5/12-6/15: 8.55/3.59/3.38 6/22-10/3: 3.66/3.09/3.47
There is exactly one outlier in his ERA/xERA/FIP/xFIP numbers going back to 2017 and it's his 2021 ERA. And there is exactly one outlier in the three chunks listed above and it's his 5/12-6/15 ERA.
Seven games of bad luck. That's all it is.
“You know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s 25 hits. Twenty-five hits in 500 at-bats is 50 points, OK? There’s six months in a season. That’s about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week, just one, a gork, a ground ball — a ground ball with eyes! — you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week and you’re in Yankee Stadium." The thing is, there is good reason to believe that some hitters have a PA-specific good-karma skill ("karma" being short for wOBA -xwOBA). Certainly we've seen guys intentionally slow their bat speed down in order to hit a ball with a low xBA with a good direction, to a spot where the defense isn't. Alex Verdugo does this against LHP when he's going well.
(This is related to, but must be kept separate from, slowing your bat speed down to hit a tough pitch in the air between the infielders and outfielders. IOW, a distance and hang-time "hit 'em where they ain't" instead of a directional one. Xander excels at this. It does not show up in Statcast as karma, but it does show up as low EV, high xBA.
Of course, this also happens when a guy swings hard and hits the ball just right, which is to say wrong but lucky. It's really easy to see the difference with the eye; we either say "that was a good piece of hitting" or "oh, man, that was pure luck." Bat speed data -- which teams have, I believe, but isn't at Savant -- would discriminate low-EV skill from low-EV luck very clearly.)
The way that xwOBA is derived, you can't come out ahead, with good karma, in the long run, and that's because the best hitters also hit the ball into skillfully positioned defenses.
So the hypothesis here is that in E-Rod's two stretches of bad karma (the second of which turned great pitching into solid), he was doing something that allowed a disproportionate number of hitters to choose to beat the defense rather than to try to hit into it successfully.
We also know that pulled fly balls have good karma, and fly balls hit to CF have bad karma. The pitcher absolutely does contribute to the batted ball direction there. So a second factor that might create an extended stretch of bad karma is doing something that skews fly ball direction.
Whatever he was doing wrong, if it did exist, he fixed it twice. If it is real, they very likely have already figured it out.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 18, 2021 8:15:23 GMT -5
Has anyone pointed this out? Since the start of expanded playoffs, the Sox has never lost a series where the lost game 1 and won game 2. They're 4-0. Three of them ended in 3- or 4-game sweeps.
1986, Angels CS. Won 5 through 7. 2013 Tigers CS. Won 3, 5, and 6. 2018 Astros CS. Won 3 through 5. 2021 Rays DS. Won 3 and 4.
First three were home losses.
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 18, 2021 4:30:36 GMT -5
I do think the analytical stats are more predictive. I look at it this way. E-Rod was not good this year. Others will say he's simply unlucky. I evaluate him on the actual year he had, the runs he actually gave up because that's the bottom line. Despite his mediocre year he had indicators showing that the 3 true outcomes he can control are in line with his numbers when he had better years or actual results so I can justify using those analytics to judge his future going forward. And I'm just using E-Rod as an example. So I guess it's kind of splitting hairs with the difference simply being the outlook. And in that case, as they say, YMMV. I trust that the FO will spend a lot more time than members on a message board citing FIP/xFIP/etc. trying to figure out exactly why his ERA was out of line, particularly why his strand rate was so low and why his BABIP was so high. How much can they attribute to poor defense, poor alignment? How much can they attribute to bad sequencing of hits, bad pitching in RISP? Is there a flaw in his pitching that led to poor performance with RISP? If they have a reason they I suspect they sign him to an extension. But I sure hope they put in more work than "his FIP is good, let's sign him". Some E-Rod numbers:
He had very good inherited runner support. His ERA with average support is 4.90.
With the bases empty, he had a .283 xwOBA and .303 wOBA. MLB was .309, .313. Sox as a team were .309, .326, the difference being bad defense and Fenway. So his karma with the bases empty was absolutely normal, just .003 worse than the team as a whole.
With runners on, he had a .298 xwOBA and .371 wOBA. League was .317, .322. Sox were .313, .320.
So the bad strand rate and bad BABIP were one problem.
However, this badness was not distributed equally across the season. xwOBA / wOBA with runners on:
.279 / .310, 4/8 to 5/7 .294 / .445, 5/12 to 6/22 .308 / .313, 6/27 to 9/2 .309 / .434, 9/7 to 10/1
The similarities between chunks 1 and 3, and 2 and 4, warrant lumping the two pairs together to test the hypothesis that he did something wrong with runners on in two discrete stretches.
If you look at the two stretches of normal karma starts as one sample and the two stretches of bad karma starts as another (eliminating three starts with <5 PA with runners on) ... the start-to-start variances are very close (.018. .015). But the means (unweighted by PA in each start) are .010 and .150. And the odds of the bad stretches being that much worse at random are 610 to 1.
... so, you mean work like that? They have 100x the data, easily.
He's had excellent runner-on karma so far in the post-season.
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 18, 2021 1:20:11 GMT -5
You missed the "if" in the last line. Mookie wasn't enamored of playing in Boston, and it seems likely now to me that the team worried at least a bit that he would have a steeper-than-usual aging decline.
It seems to me that all three of the players named want to stay. A guy who loves his current situation, which is furthermore a team that looks like it will be a serious WS contender every year of their next contract, will sign a team-friendly deal. The notion that players would take, say, $25M a year to play in a new town, with new teammates and a new manager, for a team with maybe a 50% shot of reaching the playoffs each year, rather than stay here for, say, $20M, is bonkers. The extra $ is unlikely to alter their life at all. Winning a WS or two instead of missing out is universally regarded by these guys as life-enhancing. It's why they play. And it never gets old.
I'm talking about finding guys like Hernandez and Renfroe on the cheap, that produce that way. Only because they may not have enough roster spots to fill with upside projects.
Kiké, Pivetta, and Renfroe are all key contributors where they seemed to have had a specific idea as to how to turn an OK or worse ballplayer into a much better one. Arroyo, ditto, to a lesser extent. Richards seemed to be well on his way to being another success story before the sticky. They fixed Robles, who had been very good and then terrible this season. Franchy was the one guy they clearly failed to extract the hoped-for upside from this year, and there's an argument that Peraza frpm last year should be on that list as well. Perez may have had further upside in their minds that was never realized; that's unclear. I think they were intrigued by Yaksel Rios as a possible high-lev guy but didn't pursue it much.
Andriese was coming off of a great September, and had a great month for us before re-pumpkinizing. We may never know what happened there.
I suspect that the failures are guys who turn out to be relatively uncoachable. It's hard to tell that before a trade or signing.
I don't think that Marwin was a project, just a guy whose versatility they thought they needed, and then had a bad year at the plate. Santana was a guy they took a flyer on because they could.
It's such a substantial body of work with a high enough success rate that I see no argument against not finding more of these guys on a regular basis. You just might not have a lot of needs. But in most years you'll have one or even two bench spots to fill with an upside project. For next year, there's room for a LHH 1B who can play OF or 3B, which is to say, someone better than Shaw. And there's always room for a couple of pitchers.
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 18, 2021 0:41:02 GMT -5
Braves match Sox with back to back walk offs As bad as the heredia play was that Seager play has to be made. Incredibly great ball game. Defensive miscues are a part of baseball, so it's kind of cool that the last 2 Dogers runs and the final Braves run scored on them. Pedroia would have had that, and maybe with one eye shut.
Also cool that the crazy baserunner who steals the first of the two tying runs gets the walkoff single ... immediately after the egregious defensive butcher has his chance for redemption and grounds out meekly.
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 17, 2021 18:04:01 GMT -5
Based on the final B-Ref WAR numbers, the RS got 9.5 WAR from their starting OF of Verdugo, KKH and Renfroe at an AAV of less than $11 million. The three starting OF CB jettisoned, Benny, JBJ and Mookie, accounted for 5.9 WAR at an AAV of north of $45 million. This is the template we'll see for future CB team building. His abilities to identify value FAs and develop players on the farm will allow him to walk away from veterans he sees as declining (Benny and JBJ) or who want mega contracts (Mookie). He'll know that he can replace their production with value signings and with the prospects his assembly-line of a farm system will relentlessly produce. I'm interested to see whether he re-signs established guys who are willing to take hometown discounts to remain. X, Raffy and E-Rod might be good tests of that. I'm confident and hopeful that if X and Devers want top-of-the-market money and years, he'll move them before they hit FA and get value in return like he did with Mookie. You can't do that year after year. This will be Ben Cherington 2.0 if he thinks that way. You missed the "if" in the last line. Mookie wasn't enamored of playing in Boston, and it seems likely now to me that the team worried at least a bit that he would have a steeper-than-usual aging decline.
It seems to me that all three of the players named want to stay. A guy who loves his current situation, which is furthermore a team that looks like it will be a serious WS contender every year of their next contract, will sign a team-friendly deal. The notion that players would take, say, $25M a year to play in a new town, with new teammates and a new manager, for a team with maybe a 50% shot of reaching the playoffs each year, rather than stay here for, say, $20M, is bonkers. The extra $ is unlikely to alter their life at all. Winning a WS or two instead of missing out is universally regarded by these guys as life-enhancing. It's why they play. And it never gets old.
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